


Web Dev with Spider-Man

by FlippedScript



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: College, Emails, F/M, Group Partners to Lovers, Pre-Law Michelle Jones, Secret Identity, Social Media, Texting, group projects
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28377093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlippedScript/pseuds/FlippedScript
Summary: Frankly, so long as she doesn’t have to do all of the work she doesn’t really care, so long as her partner isn’t complete deadweight.Unfortunately for Michelle, her partner is Peter Parker, who has yet to attend a single class meeting.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Comments: 18
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

If she’s being honest, Michelle Jones doesn’t understand why she has to take Introduction to Programming as a pre-law student. Yes, she fully understands that she needs to fulfill a tech credit, and yes, it’s easy as hell to get an ‘A’ in, but it’s the group work that trips her up.

Apparently Professor Octavius, whose reviews were overwhelmingly positive and who gave out scores of 95 and above like candy, was secretly a supervillain, and after Spider-Man locked her up about a week before classes started, ESU had taken some random business teacher to teach the class.

There’s nothing _wrong_ with the new teacher, of course, but they clearly aren’t prepared to teach anything related to Computer Science, and the TA takes up most of the responsibility, something he seems fine with. Ned, the poor TA, basically rewrote the curriculum over the course of the weekend, and somehow the teacher does okay with it.

There’s a lot of group work though, which would normally not be a problem, if not for the choice of partners: pretty much everyone else in the class is a freshman who is actually majoring on Computer Science. As far as she can tell, this means that they seem to have traded social skills and prior experience speaking to girls for axe body spray and the tendency to do things like mansplain what an integer is even as if Michelle hadn’t taken AP Calc during her junior year of High School.

She somehow makes it through the semester though, and according to her calculations, she only really needs an 80 on the final exam to get an A in the class. And yes, that’s an exact number, because the final is worth 35% and she’s got a perfect score on everything up until now. What surprises her, of course, even though it shouldn’t, is that the final is also a group project, which seems a little unfair to her, but she’ll power through.

Frankly, so long as she doesn’t have to do all of the work she doesn’t really care, so long as her partner isn’t complete deadweight.

It’s a small class though, almost 20 people, and most weeks almost everyone makes it to each lecture. (To Michelle, the number seems high - she makes it a point to never miss a class, even a useless one, but she’s surprised so many first semester freshman feel the same way.) Maybe it’s the fact that 5% of the grade is participation - a number that wouldn’t do much to scare anyone but impressionable freshman. By now, she can recognize everyone in the room, and has a decent grasp of how likely each of them are to actually be helpful.

Ned adds that groups will be assigned that night in a post on Google Classroom before going on to explain the actual project. They have two weeks and Michelle doesn’t think it’ll be that hard, but there’s an additional writing component, which means that she’ll probably want to get done with the actual coding work earlier.

With two weeks left, though, she puts the assignment on her Google Calendar, and turns her focus to her other classes.

Michelle forgets about the assignment over the weekend - she has plenty of other work to do, and she doesn’t have class again until the next Monday, so she dives into old case rulings and focuses on her end of term papers. On Monday, she wakes up to an email, and realizes that _crap_ , she hasn’t even reached out to her partner, whose name she doesn’t recognize at all.

* * *

**CS1001 Final Project** Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 3:47 AM

From: [pparker01@esu.edu](mailto:pparker@esu.edu) To: [mjones07@esu.edu](mailto:mjones07@esu.edu)

Hi Michelle,

This is Peter Parker, your partner for the CS1001 Final Project. I took a quick look at the assignment and it looks like the easiest way to get everything done will be for one person to do the coding part of the project, and the other to do the slides and script for the presentation. Do you have a preference on which you would do?

Peter Parker

ESU Biochem ’23

Freelance Photographer

* * *

Michelle really isn’t sure what to make of the email, especially since she hasn’t ever seen Peter in person. At least, she’s pretty sure. His email doesn’t have a profile picture, instead just his initials show (unfortunate on two counts, really) where most students have a headshot or something. But she’s pretty sure she would recognize him, and it looks like he’s a sophomore as well.

Add in the fact that Peter apparently feels that sending an email at nearly four in the morning is acceptable, Michelle’s hope aren’t high. Besides, it doesn’t seem like Peter can be bothered to show up to class to begin with. Put it all together, and especially given the fact that she’s dealt with too many situations where a partner takes too long to get their half of the work done, Michelle is not about to take that chance her so far perfect 4.0 on a random partner actually following through.

* * *

**Re: CS1001 Final Project** Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 10:13 AM

From: [mjones07@esu.edu](mailto:mjones07@esu.edu) To: [pparker01@esu.edu](mailto:pparker@esu.edu)

Hi Peter,

Thanks for reaching out. I’d prefer to split the work on both the code and presentation/script, and typically I’ve found that working in person works best.

Do you have some times that you’re free this week?

Michelle Jones

* * *

There. Good enough. Hopefully Peter can get back to her at some point today, and they can start to make progress. Michelle scans through the assignment and sets up her dev environment before going back to normal work.

Peter doesn’t get back to that day.

He doesn’t respond the next day, either.

Michelle does, however, wake up to a monstrosity of an email the next morning, once again sent at a time when even the city that never sleeps probably deserves some shut eye. She’s still blinking sleep from her face as she sees the email preview from her phone. She pulls herself out of bed and to her desk to read Peter’s response on a large enough screen to read without straining her eyes.

* * *

**Re: CS1001 Final Project** Wed, Dec 16, 2020 at 2:31 AM

From: [pparker01@esu.edu](mailto:pparker@esu.edu) To: [mjones07@esu.edu](mailto:mjones07@esu.edu)

Are you sure? It seems like just doing the code or report is going to be easier than try to do it all together. I don’t mind doing either, if you want to just do whichever you think is easier.

If you do want to meet in person, I’m available from 9:30pm-11:00pm on most nights, or from 6:00am-8:30am on Tuesday and Thursdays. I’m also free most of the day on weekends. I know this isn’t a great schedule, but it’s not particularly negotiable on my end.

Peter

* * *

Well, at least Peter is _aware_ that his schedule is garbage, Michelle decides as she rolls her eyes. There’s not much that can be done though, and she did insist on meeting in person, so she types out a response.

* * *

**Re: CS1001 Final Project** Wed, Dec 16, 2020 at 9:32 AM

From: [mjones07@esu.edu](mailto:mjones07@esu.edu) To: [pparker01@esu.edu](mailto:pparker@esu.edu)

Peter,

I’m not sure how you make it through school while clearly nocturnal, but 7:15 does work for me. I’ll meet you at Jitters? It’s only a block or two away from campus, and is open 24/7.

Michelle Jones

* * *

She gets an affirmative response and Peter’s phone number a few minutes later, and sets her alarm for 6:30 instead of the normal 7:30 for the next day, sending him a text so he has her number as well. With that, she gets ready for her day, which does include her section of CS1001.

Peter doesn’t show up, which shouldn’t be a surprise, but Michelle is annoyed nonetheless. It doesn’t sound like anyone has ever seen Peter attend a class, she finds once she asks around, although a few people do say that he was really helpful on their group projects.

That at least is a relief, because Michelle doesn’t have the time to do all the work, nor would she be willing to even if she did have the time to do so. (Instead, she’d sell him out to Ned and the professor without remorse, although she knows from experience that neither are willing to do anything about a useless group-mate.)

She’s able to get a little work on the project done, but decides to go to bed a bit early to make sure she’s ready for the next morning.

Jitters was recommended to Michelle by a grad TA she had, and it’s perfect - open 24 hours, always quiet enough to work, but not so quiet to where you’ll be judged for talking. She arrives a bit early, orders herself a coffee and a blueberry muffin, and sets herself up in the corner. As she pulls off her gloves and sets up her computer, a text flashes across the screen.

* * *

**Peter Parker**

Wednesday 9:38 AM

This is Michelle. I’ll see you at 7:15 at Jitters to work on our project.

Yep! I’ll see you then.

Today 7:12 AM

Hey, I just wanted to let you know I’ll be a few minutes late.

* * *

God damn it. Michelle holds back a grimace as she takes a sip of her coffee. By 7:20, she assumes Peter isn’t coming. Chances are he has plenty of other open times to have met, too, and that he’s just fucking with her. She imagines some frat guy in boat shoes and a too-expensive button down laughing with a herd of douchey frat bros at the fact that he stood her up.

What she doesn’t expect, is for a baby faced college kid to run through the door a few moments later, clearly out of breath. “Is Michelle here?” He asks to the room, as if anyone other than the underpaid barista would have any idea who Michelle is.

“Over here,” Michelle calls out, raising a hand and humoring him. He offers and smile and tugs down his hat, curly hair springing out from beneath it as he drops a ratty backpack onto the seat across from her. He pauses for a moment, tilts his head, and then turns on his heel.

“Let me go buy something,” he explains, which is fair enough. Michelle studies him for a moment, watching as he shoves a 5 into the tip jar, and tries to figure out just who Peter Parker is. He’s wearing a too-big winter coat and is admittedly pretty attractive, but the whole near-nocturnal thing still stumps her, as does the water he sets down next to a protein bar.

“No coffee?” Michelle challenges, looking up at Peter. He paused for a moment before he speaks.

“Nah. My Uncle always said that the best thing to wake you up in the morning is excitement for your day,” Peter finally replies, maintaining a small smile. Michelle can tell that there’s more to it than that, especially since that was the sort of sentiment she expected from a classics major who brewed their own tea and not from a biochem major who looked a bit like he had just rolled out of bed and a bit like he had been awake for hours.

“Well, I prefer the caffeine, but to each their own,” she smiles, and really, there’s no reason for Peter to be likable enough for her to smile, but she can’t help it. “Let’s get into the work?” She suggests.

Peter has no qualms doing so, and she can understand exactly what her peers meant when they talked about how good of a partner he was. Peter is incredibly bright and he makes it clear, while still managing not to make her feel bad about the concepts and ideas that don’t come natural to her.

Peter does have a habit of looking at his phone more often than he probably should, but only for a few seconds at a time, more like he’s expecting an important call than he is ignoring her in favor of checking sports scores or whatever it is unfairly attractive biochem majors do.

They get through so much in the fourty-five minutes they work together that she lets it go, and one emailed .py file later they both have a pretty solid idea of what the next steps are, at least until the next meeting.

As far as the next meeting, Peter does apologize that he was late, and promises to send another set of times that he’s free as soon as he figures it out. He’s out the door a few seconds later, hat hastily tugged over his head and only one strap of his backpack actually over his shoulder. By the time Michelle makes it out the door, Peter is nowhere to be seen.

At this point, Michelle is having a hard time figuring the guy out. He’s clearly smart and is getting good grades, he’s far better than most of his peers at interacting with people, but he seems to be nocturnal and doesn’t show up to class. Or at least, he doesn’t show up to CS1001.

In her experience, most people are pretty easy to understand, and if they aren’t, there’s usually one or maybe two pieces of information that help everything slot into place. With Peter, Michelle couldn’t imagine anything that would make that happen.


	2. Chapter 2

After the first meeting, the work Michelle needs to get done comes easier than pretty much anything since the start of the semester. She and Peter had decided to make a website that made a word cloud based on tweets, which left two obvious parts to code - the tweet getting, and the actual presentation of the data.

Most of Michelle’s group partners thus far would have perpetuated unfortunate stereotypes and pushed her towards the presentation, but Peter had been more than happy to take that role on.

* * *

**Peter Parker**

Thursday 5:23 AM

I put my work so far in the Google Drive. If you could let me know how it looks I’d appreciate it.

* * *

Michelle is primarily concerning about one aspect of Peter’s texts: the time they were sent. As far as she can tell, Peter’s sleep schedule is clearly just broken. That said, as long as he gets things done though it’s not like his health is really Michelle’s problem, so she has decided to ignore it and just try to do what she can. That said, she’s working on being less rude.

She doesn’t have any classes on Thursdays (or Tuesdays for that matter), so she pulls up the shared Drive Folder she made for them and clicks through what Peter sent. It’s a bit of a hassle to get it all working, but she does so eventually, and Peter’s work does look decent.

(This already puts him in the upper echelons of group partners, which is in itself kind of ridiculous. There's a reason she hates group work.) 

* * *

Thursday 8:45 AM

What is wrong with your sleep schedule?

That said does looks good - I’ll be working on my part today.

Thursday 1:32 PM

I did go to sleep.And thanks! :)

Thursday 2:13 PM

At least you did sleep,I wasn’t sure if you did that.

* * *

She’s working on setting up the project to read tweets when Peter taps back a sad face, which was as clear an indication as any that he isn’t appreciative of her judgement. He’ll have to deal with it, though, she decides, putting her phone away and turning her attention back to the project.

* * *

**Peter Parker**

Thursday 8:19 PM

Will I be seeing you in class tomorrow?

* * *

The text feels petty. Even so, she was honestly curious. As group partners, it made sense to want to know if Peter would be in class today. She didn’t expect to see him, and she admittedly didn’t need to be so passive aggressive about it, but she did kind of want to see him.

Still, there was, infuriatingly, no response. She didn’t assume that he would respond immediately, of course, but for someone who seemed to check his phone often she was admittedly irked, even if she tried to ignore it as she went back to her work.

Did she check her phone more often than normal?

No comment.

Finally, her phone does buzz, and she checks it without hesitation.

* * *

**Peter Parker**

Thursday 10:27 PM

I can show up if I need to, but I was planning to catch up on sleep.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

That tends to be the norm for you.

* * *

Peter doesn’t reply, and Michelle rolled her eyes at the lack of a response. She supposes that she should expect that much, at this point. She reviews her notes for a few minutes, before getting ready for bed.

* * *

**Peter Parker**

Friday 3:56 AM

I can be there, sorry. Just been busy.

* * *

Against her better instincts, Michelle decides to be nice to Peter, and not give him that much shit. It has nothing to do with the fact that he’s clearly just _earnest_ , if a bit of a disaster.

* * *

**Peter Parker**

Friday 8:10 AM

I’m messing with you. You don’t have to.

Catch up on some sleep instead or something.

I’ll be there.

* * *

In hindsight, maybe Michelle’s tone isn’t perfect, but that’s okay.

Well, there wasn’t much that could be done about it from there. What she know of Peter didn’t exactly mesh well with what Michelle though of when she imagined the class. (Was there even going to be a chair for him?) Either way, she worked a bit more on the project, managing to get a few aspects of it to play nicely with one another before heading off to her classes for the day.

Michelle had a short break just before CS1001, and she would typically spend it outside or grabbing lunch. Her choosing to spend it in the empty classroom was for no reason other than that she wanted to leverage the quiet to get a bit more work done.

Obviously, no other reason.

* * *

**Peter Parker**

Friday 3:15 PM

I’ll be a few minutes late to class, sorry. Where on campus is it?

Nevermind.

* * *

Michelle couldn’t tell if the ‘Nevermind’ was because he was no longer planning to show up, or because he figured out the room number. Either way, she tried to push the thought out of mind, and focused on the work in front of her. Students slowly trickled in as she tried to focus, and the room was as full as ever by the time class began. Aside from Peter, who Michelle had decidedly not seen walk through the door like she had been expecting and hoping him to.

Somehow, as if by a miracle, Peter ran through the doors just before class began. It was almost comical the way he looked around the room, eyes narrowed before he hurried to take a seat beside Michelle.

“Seat’s taken,” she joked just as Peter dropped his bag to the group with a thump.

“Oh, uh, I’m sorry,” Peter stuttered, clumsily moving to pick up his bag as the teacher started on whatever speak she had prepared for the day.

“By you, dumbass, sit down,” Michelle finished, smirking as she turned back to pretending to listen.

Peter was a good sport about the joke, at least, or maybe he was just too tired to care. He more or less fell into the seat, pulling off his beanie and letting his hair fly loose as he watched the slides with far more interest than they warranted.

Eventually, the lecture slowed to a stop, and the remainder of the class period was set aside for group work. Peter freely admitted that the mockups were most of what he had time for thus far, and he didn’t have his computer with him (who didn’t bring a computer to a CS class?) but did promise to get things done by Sunday morning.

Michelle decided not to ask whether Sunday morning meant three AM or nine AM, but either way there would be plenty of time to get the project done. She worked a bit with him on figuring out how to send the right data to his half of the work, before showing what she had already done.

“So for instance, it’ll look through all these tweets, based on some search term,” she explained, pointing to the white text in the terminal of her MacBook as she explained.

“And all of these are related to what term right now?” Peter asked, narrowing his eyes as he scooted the chair a bit closer to the laptop screen.

“New York Times right now, but it looks like most of the tweets showing up are from them and not about ,” Michelle murmured.

“That might be tricky to fix,” Peter agreed. “Maybe we can just demo with search terms that won’t do things like that?” He suggested.

That made… a lot of sense, although Michelle was probably still going to at least try to figure it out. She considered a few concepts, before Peter’s voice brought her back to the present.

“Uh, Michelle? Is this current?” He asked, seeming a bit worried.

“Yeah, it should be. Here, I can re-run it,” she offered, doing so and watching as pretty much the same results filled the screen.

* * *

**The New York Times** @nytimes • 2hr ago

Neptune boasts some of the strangest weather in the solar system. While observing the planet’s large inky storm, astronomers spotted a smaller vortex they named Dark Spot Jr.

**35s on Today’s NYT Mini** @crosswordking • 35m ago

Anyone else annoyed that you can’t access old mini puzzles without paying for an account? I know I should at this post but even so.

**The New York Times** @nytimes • 3min ago

Olivia ‘Doctor Octopus’ Octavius escapes from the Raft, making her way towards the campus of Empire State University, her former employer.

* * *

Peter looked incredibly nervous, and judging by the most recent of those selected tweets, that was probably a smart way to feel. ‘Doc Oc’ had seemed absolutely crazy towards the end of it.

“I’m gonna uh, get going. I’ll email you about the project or uh, something,” Peter stuttered, practically dashing out the door. That seemed to be a pattern with him.

Somehow, pretty much as soon as Peter was gone, Ned had taken his place. Ned had probably been one of Michelle’s favorite parts of the class - he was always helpful, and didn’t give off the same rude energy that most of her group partners did. Today, it seemed like he had been helping a number of the less prepared groups.

“How is your work going so far?” He asked, taking an awkward seat on the desk, clearly not sure if Peter would be back.

“Doing alright. Not sure why Peter left so quick, though,” she spoke. “Bit of a flake, really,” she added.

“Yeah, he’s uh, kinda like that,” Ned replied, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m surprised he showed up to be honest, he normally works all night.” That at least, made some sense to Michelle. It explained the odd sleep schedule, and the fact that he seemed to get most of his work done while the moon was up and New York was quiet…er.

“What’s he do?” She asked idly, as if Ned would actually know.

“He, uh, takes pictures!” Ned exclaimed, miming a camera as if Michelle didn’t know what one was. “He takes pictures of Spider-Man for the Daily Bugle, so he has to leave at weird times when he sees Spider-Man will probably be there,” Ned continued, like what he already said hadn’t shattered Michelle’s worldview. “He tries to get pictures of him at night, too.”

Well, at the very least, that explained Peter’s odd hours and why he had left so suddenly, Michelle realized, the headline concerning ‘Doc Oc’ a pretty clear indication of what Peter expected would occur.

“He’s taking pictures right now, then?” She asks, just to confirm what she already knew.

Ned takes a minute to consider. “He’ll try to. It depends on if he can get near or not, and with someone as dangerous as Doc Oc, he won’t unless he’s sure it’s safe.”

“You know him well, then?” Michelle asks, distracting herself from the realizing that her new _crush_ group partner was throwing himself into danger.

“Uh, yeah. Don’t tell anyone, since I’m your TA,” Ned hedged, waiting for Michelle to nod before continuing. “We’re actually roommates, we’ve been best friends since middle school,” he added.

“His sleep schedule always been this bad?” Michelle asked.

Ned shrugged, and Michelle raised an eyebrow as he turned his attention to a text message.

“We should uh, maybe evacuate from here. This used to be Dr. Octavius, uh, Doc Oc’s classroom…” Ned trailed off, the implication clear enough. He hurried over to the teacher, seeming to explain the situation as best he could, but Michelle wasn’t exactly interested in waiting to see what they decided. She slammed her laptop shut, grabbed her jacket by the sleeve, and hurried out of the room as soon as possible, hurrying down the stairs to the lobby space as quickly as possible.

Spider-Man was there, perched on the side of a support pole, tense. The next second it was like he wasn’t, kicking off of the door and practically flying towards the door. As Michelle’s eyes followed him, she took in the scene of destruction in the

She shouldn’t be that surprised by the shrieks, or by the sound of glass breaking by the doors, or by a supervillain, even if she does look much stronger than she did in prior pictures. Michelle is woman of action however, which means she knows exactly what to do - she turns heel and heads toward the fire exit as quickly as possible, leaving the fight between Spider-Man and Doc Oc behind her, at least for the time being.


	3. Chapter 3

Alright, that last bit was a lie. Michelle’s decision to get away from the fight is not a short term one - she’s just getting the hell out of there. She hasn’t run in ages, probably not since gym class sophomore year of high school, but she books it. She doesn’t even know where she is going, at this point, aside from _away_.

Michelle has never thought that she would be the type to run from much of anything. But in that moment, when a crazy supervillain had been ready to wreak havoc within a few hundred feet of her, that was the only thing she can make herself do.

So Michelle ran, and she kept running, all the way to the coffee shop that smells like burnt coffee and has fake vines on the wall, right into that spot she likes in the corner where the wall slopes a bit and where the cushions are a little bit more worn. She tries to take a few deep breaths, only to realize that she is panting, sucking in air as her adrenaline wears off. Damn. She sucks in a few deep breaths, before shuffling to the counter, buying an overpriced gatorade from the fridge below the cash register.

It’s weird, trying to pretend like things are normal even after how scary the last half hour or so had been. Yes, New York as a whole had gotten used to Spider-Man and the various supervillains he somehow ended up fighting, but most of New York’s nearly nine million people had never actually interacted with Spider-Man. Given the fact that her heart rate still hasn’t slowed down from even seeing what was probably an insane fight, that’s likely for the best.

Michelle practically chugs the gatorade before taking a moment to pull out and organize her notes, trying to focus on Marbury v. Madison instead of Spider-Man v. Doctor Olivia Octavius. She also tries to block out the fact that saidsupervillain was almost her teacher. She fails at both, and her phone is out less than a minute later, and she’s scrolling through twitter looking for live updates as to what happened in the fight. It seems like it’s still going on, and eventually some of the big hero watch accounts are tweeting blurry footage of a robotic arm smashing a statue and a second slapping Spider-Man into a wall.

It’s hard to watch, and harder to follow what’s going on as the information comes in. From what Michelle can tell, Spider-Man had been able to handle Doc Oc without too much trouble (a few tweets were saying Spidey had even been rougher than normal, but Michelle can’t tell the difference from grainy, fifteen-second twitter clips).

In theory, of course, knowing that the fight had been finished and the good guy had won should have been enough to calm Michelle down, but she can’t. She tries to take a few more deep breaths, and tries to focus on what Madison has to say for a few more minutes before finally giving up. It’s pretty clear that she’s not going to get much done today.

She’s starting to pack up to head home, looking out the front door when she sees Peter Parker of all people arrive, hunched over out of breath before he spots her. As soon as he does he seems to sigh of relief, for a reason that Michelle doesn’t quite understand. He hurries over to her, all but collapsing into the chair beside her. “You’re okay,” he breathes out, like he’s surprised.

“Uh, yeah?” Michelle asks, because why wouldn’t she be? She feels like a bit of a hypocrite as she says that though, because she certainly doesn’t feel okay, but Peter doesn’t need to know that.

“You, uh, weren’t answering your texts,” Peter says softly, and oh. That makes more sense.

Michelle grabs for her phone in her bag, and glares into it for the moment it takes before the five missed messages and four missed calls swipe away and she can read what Peter texted her.

* * *

**Peter Parker**

Friday 4:17 PM

Hey, the fight just finished, are you okay?

You good?

Michelle?

Did you go back to the classroom?

Call me back if you can

* * *

“Oh. Uh, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear my phone,” Michelle says as she reads the messages, Peter’s concern evident through the texts. She pushes her finger to the left a bit, and each of Peter’s texts is spaced just a few minutes apart. She looks back up again at Peter, who seems tired beyond belief. He’s a bit scratched up as well, a little bit of dried blood trailing from a split on his lip down to his chin.

“It’s okay,” Peter rushes to reassure her, taking a long, slow breath as he pulls a metal water bottle from his backpack. “I was just worried, I didn’t see you and it can be dangerous, is all,” he explained.

“Yeah,” Michelle says, haltingly. “It was just a little much, I decided to just put some distance between me and it all, you know?” She asks, not sure why she feels such a need to justify her ~~cowardice~~ actions to Peter Parker, flake extraordinaire.

“Yeah,” Peter agrees, softly. “It can be… a lot. You’re okay?” He asks, putting a gentle hand on her knee, grounding her.

(It’s weird, she’ll realize later. She hates when anyone, even family touches her, but with Peter it felt nice, far more so than she would have expected)

“I will be,” Michelle says softly, her own hand gentle as she placed it over Peter’s. “Are you good?” She asks softly, pointing her free hand towards his split lip.

“Yeah, some rubble got me while I was trying to get a picture,” Peter shrugged, apparently unbothered. Judging by the faint outline of scars that went up and down his arms, the fact that he was ignoring his injury shouldn’t have been a surprise.

“Did the pictures turn out okay?” She asks, eyes following Peter’s as he looked towards his bag, pulling a digital camera out and discarding some device attached where the flash would be. 

(She ignores that fact that he moved his hand from her leg to do so, and how weird it is to no longer feel his touch.)

“I’m not sure,” Peter replies, clicking the camera on and turning the screen towards her. “Help me look through them?” He asks, furrowing his brow as he studies the small screen.

“Sure,” Michelle agrees, moving to sit next to Peter, her hand awkwardly finding its way to his knee as she steadies herself, and then just because.

They scroll through the pictures and she ignores how intimate it is, hand on Peter’s knee as they speak in hushed tones in the corner of the coffee shop.

Most of the pictures are pretty blurry, but a few of them are absolute gems, frames that perfectly seem to capture the grace of Spider-Man as he flips through the air. Strands of webbing frame a few of the pictures at one corner or another, and one photo perfectly captures a punch that one of the metal arms of Doc Oc lands on Spider-Man’s chin, knocking him back into the air.

The photos are almost all exceptional, but Peter seems far more critical of them, deleting the blurry ones with practiced ease before settling on a few that he seems to like.

“I’m pretty sure Jay-Jay will only take two of these,” Peter mutters, flicking through a few of the remaining photos. Each of them are jaw-dropping, and Michelle can’t help but feel like any could sell for way more than he probably gets from the Bugle.

“Jameson?” She clarifies, raising an eyebrow.

“Mmhm. He, uh, paid me more than I probably deserved early on, and it helped cover some medical bills for my Aunt,” Peter explained. Frankly, that explanation left more questions than answers, but Michelle wasn’t going to interrupt. “I figure I owe him,” Peter explained. “And he pays me pretty well. Doesn’t try to make me actually sign any contracts too, which is appreciated.”

As a budding pre-law student, Michelle is going to choose to ignore that, at least for now. She’s sure that some freelance photographers are in a similar situation to Peter (and a few of them do work to get pictures of Spider-Man, but most papers seem to push news about him to the third or fourth page now, if you even bother to buy a print paper).

“I like all of them, honestly,” Michelle says, steering the conversation back to the photos. A few are from the middle of the fight, one is from before it even really began, and a few are from after. All that’s left is the rubble left by the combatants. Together, they tell quite the story, but Peter furrows and eyebrow, and removes the one from after the fight, Michelle’s favorite, without too much thought.

“You’re choosing the ones that make Spider-Man look bad,” Michelle accuses, watching as Peter continues to eliminate a few more photos.

“Mmhm,” Peter says, exhaling through his nose. “That’s what JJ wants to see, unfortunately.” That… makes sense, Michelle supposes. The Bugle has backed off of the anti-Spidey rhetoric in the last year or so, but they do seem to like to push the narrative at least a bit.

“You agree with him?” She asks, and Peter’s snort of laughter speaks for itself.

“Nah,” Peter agrees, “Spider-Man is a good guy.” He trails off for a second, before adding “as far as I can tell, you know?” He laughs.

“Certainly seems to be,” Michelle agreed, “not that I’ve ever met the guy,” she added, as if she of all people would have met Spider-Man somehow.

“Yeah, for sure. I’ve never, uh talked to him either, but he, uh, seems like a good guy,” Peter stuttered.

Michelle personally tends to just ignore Spider-Man. He does his job, if you can call it that, but there isn’t much that really affects her day-to-day. Plenty of her peers had (and probably still have) huge crushes on him, which the abs make understandable, but still.

She and Peter end up talking for a bit more, and agree that they can meet at some point on Sunday for the next meeting. Eventually they get up to leave, headed back towards campus. Peter keeps pace with her, like he knows that she still needs someone near her for at least a bit longer.

“Hey Peter,” Michelle spoke, keeping step with him as they walked back towards campus.

“Hm?” He asked, shifting his backpack a bit as he slowed down to match her pace.

“Thanks for checking on me, I really appreciate it,” she said, wondering if she could convey how much she really did appreciate it.

“Of course. Thanks for giving me shit about actually getting the project done. I can be a bit of a disaster, as you can tell,” Peter spoke, like that wasn’t the understatement of the millennium.

“Not a problem,” Michelle laughed, ignoring the urge to pull Peter into a hug. Michelle sucked in a breath as Peter moved to turn towards the right, opposite of the direction she would have to go.

“I’ll see you Sunday?” She confirmed.

“Yeah, I’ll see you Sunday,” Peter smiled, before pausing. “Are you the other way? I’ll walk you home?” He offered.

Suddenly, Michelle felt very small, like Peter could just read her mind. “Please,” she said, turning towards the left and the crosswalk.

The walk was only a few blocks and neither Peter nor Michelle spoke, but they eventually arrived outside of her apartment, and Michelle slowed to a stop.

Before she could stop herself, Michelle pulled Peter into a hug, before pulling away and hurrying up the stairs.

“See you Sunday,” she whispered to herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feelings are starting to get involved, uh oh! 
> 
> I hope everyone enjoyed. 
> 
> Comments are always appreciated. :)


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